John McCain: 'Never forgive' John Lewis over vague church bombing reference

FILE - In this March 6, 2013, file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., gives a thumbs up as he emerges from a private dinner with President Barack Obama and Republican senators at the Jefferson Hotel in Washington. There were no breakthroughs predicted when Obama set out on his courtship of Congress. And thereâs no sign any have been achieved. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

U.S. Sen. John
McCain has been known to hold a grudge, but there's one grudge the Republican from
Arizona has been holding for nearly five years now.

It stems back to
comments U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, made during the 2008 presidential
race, when McCain and his veep pick, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, were running
a heated campaign against then-Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

In a lengthy New
Republic interview with McCain published Tuesday, McCain compares some of
the rhetoric his campaign was using against Obama ("palling around with
terrorists") to rhetoric directed at his campaign.

"With all
due respect, you never heard about when John Lewis said my campaign was worse
than the Birmingham church bombing?" McCain
asks the interviewer.

"Maybe Sarah Palin said 'palling around with terrorists,'
but the things that were said about me and her were far worse. I'll never
forgive John Lewis."

As the New Republic article
notes in a footnote, Lewis did not exactly say that the McCain-Palin campaign
was "worse" than the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, although
he did mention the campaign and the bombing in the same press release, which
undeniably suggests a connection, no matter how tangential.

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights activist who helped organize Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic march to Washington in 1963, speaks at the Huntsville Public Library Saturday afternoon, Feb. 2, 2013. The event is part of the library's celebration of Black History Month. (Sarah Cole/al.com)

What Lewis did was warn against was inflammatory rhetoric – "the
negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign" – and mentioned another time in
which highly inflammatory rhetoric was used by opponents of the Civil Rights
Movement.

Lewis, a Troy, Ala. native who was a leader in the Civil Rights
Movement, said George Wallace "created the climate and conditions that
encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans," and specifically
referenced the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. He said that McCain and Palin
were "playing with fire."

As one who was a
victim of violence and hate during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, I
am deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign.
What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American
history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and
division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.

During another
period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of
Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate.
George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created
the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent
Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights.
Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday
morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.

As public figures
with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are
playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us
all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of
the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do
better. The American people deserve better.